The present invention relates generally to absorbent wearing articles such as disposable diapers, disposable sanitary napkins, liquid-absorbent incontinence pads and the like. The present invention also relates to flexible structural units available to the absorbent article.
It is well known in the art that absorbent wearing articles (hereinafter referred to as “article”) intending to prevent a wearer's skin being soiled with bodily discharges such as loose feces by attaching a panel having a plurality of openings to an inner sheet. For example, the article disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 3681320 (hereinafter referred to as “REFERENCE”) comprises an inner sheet, an outer sheet and a liquid-absorbent core sandwiched between these top- and outer sheets. Configurationally, this article has longitudinally a front region, a rear region and an intermediate region extending between these front and rear regions. In the rear region and the intermediate region, the panel formed from a fibrous web is attached to the outer surface of the inner sheet. The panel has a plurality of openings extending through the fibrous web in its thickness direction and walls in a direction orthogonal to the thickness direction and barriers defining the respective openings wherein a fibrous density of the respective barriers is set to be gradually increased upward from the side of the inner sheet.
In the case of the wearing article disclosed in REFERENCE, watery bowel movement or loose passage flows into the openings and then solid ingredients of the watery bowel movement permeate into a low density fibrous layer, and thereby the wearer's skin can be prevented being soiled with watery bowel movement. However, in order to assure a desired mechanical strength of the panel, the barriers defining the respective openings should have thickness above a certain level. Consequently, the open area ratio of the openings has been limited to 80% or less. Additionally, it is necessarily difficult for the panel formed the fibrous web to be readily deformed in response to movement of the wearer's crotch region and often gaps have been left around the wearer's legs, causing undesirable leakage.